UPDATE: Several readers note that the "near Cambodia" completely destroys the point of Kerry's original statement. This is representative:
If the campaign is really saying Kerry was just "near Cambodia", isn't that phenomenally lame?
When Kerry brought up Cambodia, he was always doing it in the context of presidential lying--i.e. "I was in Cambodia, listening to the president say we had no troops in Cambodia".
With this re-write, it becomes "I was *near* Cambodia, listening to the president say we had no troops *in* Cambodia, which, okay, was true as far as I could tell, but if I'd been just, like, sixty miles further west, it would've been a LIE!"
Precisely. I made this point yesterday in response to some who feared Kerry could simply claim he was mistaken and was only "near" Cambodia.
The Kerry campaign in fact did tell Carl Cameron that at first and Cameron showed them that 1979 letter where Kerry not only says he was in that country, he says 5 miles in.